Bobby Kerr of LOC8 My Business on Your Marketing Dude: Google Business Profile & AI Search

Transcript from the Your Marketing Dude podcast. Cleaned from YouTube's auto-generated captions.

[0:00] Mike Cuevas: What's up, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome back to another episode of the Your Marketing Dude podcast. Folks, we're going to talk about organic today. Um, not organic any type, but um something that I'm actually working on right now, and I'm going to lay this up uh with a something I'm actually really working on right now. So, a couple weeks ago, my team here in San Diego, we're building out a um senior transition program, and I built out a whole website. This was the first website I've ever built with AI. Um, I used the Creme Institute. Um, they gave me an AI site. I wouldn't build it. I built it through text message. The site's beautiful. It's gorgeous. I love it. I love everything about it. I don't know if I ever want even a WordPress site going forward. And I'm a WordPress person. But what I also learned during that process was the importance of ranking and getting Google business profile reviews.

And the reason for that and why I learned, and again, this is going to be like a coaching call today. You guys are in for a treat. But the reason why I had to learn that is because it's an AI site and if you want to get found on ChatGPT, if you want to get found on Cloud, you want to get found on on the AI search engines, what they call LLM, if you guys aren't familiar with that term yet, um you have to get your reviews not on Zillow necessarily, at least from what I hear, but on Google, on Google My Business, because what's happening is that that trusted verification is what is getting you to pop up in like ChatGPT search and etc. And because the LLMs are so new in general, um I think this could be like a gold rush opportunity, the people that start getting in there early on are going to sort of lock in those spots. So imagine like being able to rank on Google back in the day before Google became Google. And how valuable would that be for your business if you could pop up in the first few pages?

Well, how valuable would it be in your business if you could pop up in the first few pages for real estate agent, mortgage broker, or whatever your term is. This isn't even a real estate conversation. It's just for all business. And how valuable that be to pop up in search. That's what we're going to talk about um today. So, this dude, I think we're going to get along pretty good. We look like we probably hang out on the weekends. Um but, uh he the Google guy, he's a Google business profile dude. Like, this guy knows exactly what he's doing. And I'm going to treat today as a coaching call because I'm actually doing this right now on my own website. And I have my team going out there and getting these Google business reviews. I know I'm supposed to be doing it, but I don't know why exactly. So, we're going to find out uh shortly today. So without further um ado, let's go ahead and introduce our guest, Mr. Bobby Kerr.

[2:21] Bobby Kerr: What's up, man? What's up, Mike? Happy to be here, man. Thanks so much for having me.

[2:27] Mike: Yeah, sorry for the long intro here, but what you're going to show us today is something I'm actually doing right now uh this week. I'm ready to launch my funnel, and my goal is to rank for senior transition services in San Diego and all related terms. And I know that a big part of that is Google business profile reviews because they need that trusted source. So I'm going to treat today like literally like I'm hiring you as a coaching call if that's okay with you. But I think you guys are going get a lot out of this and then hopefully um if you guys need Bobby's help uh at all on this stuff like he'll give you his information towards the end of this podcast. So Bobby tell us who you are. What do you do?

[3:06] Bobby: Yeah man. Thanks so much Mike. So my name is Bobby Kerr. I'm the founder of LOC8 My Business, specifically a real estate marketing agency. Obviously, your audience has people in a lot of different avenues. So, we're going to talk, you know, real estate. We can talk even this stuff works with legal, it works with any business. So, it's really going to work for anyone. Um, no matter the the industry that we're talking about today. So, we are truly Google business profile experts even though we are a marketing agency specifically for real estate folks. Um, we really focus on our flagship program is optimizing Google business profiles organically. You know, not focusing on PPC, pay-per-click ads, not focusing on local service ads. I think the ultimate goal for any of us as business owners and for founders is to get organic leads that we're not having to pay for, right? Like you're the marketing dude. The idea is to do content so that we get organic leads coming in. And there is truly no better way to do that than having a strong strong foundation with Google business profile. Man, I am so excited to get into it today.

[4:07] Mike: I like it. So, let's start here at the beginning. Um, because this has changed. And is it fair to say that the LLMs, the ChatGPTs — I don't know if everyone knows what LLMs are yet. Yeah. But let's just call it the search, the AI search engines. I think everyone universally agrees on that. The AI search engine sort of changed the game. Is that a fair statement? And can you please tell us why and and what's going on here and why why Google business? Like I want to put my reviews on Zillow. Why not? I'm I'm a realtor. Yeah.

[4:31] Bobby: So we I I love I keep all those questions coming because we do need to talk about industry specific platforms because they do play into how successful you are as a business owner and being found across traditional organic search as well as AI search tools. So I definitely want to talk about that component since you mentioned Zillow specifically. So why Google business profile? I mean, number one, Google Business Profile, which as you said, used to be called Google My Business. It was a standalone application on everyone's phone. You can manage your business listing. And that went by the wayside in 2022, 2023. And Google said, "Hey, you know, we've got this one data set platform that's the largest business data set on planet Earth. We've been collecting with Google vehicles collecting images and video of every square inch of planet Earth over the last 10 years. Why don't we make Google Maps the program that powers Google business profile?" And that's what they did.

So for folks that are listening and they're like, man, I haven't even touched my business profile in years. I don't even know how to get to it. The only way to do it mobiley now on a mobile device is through Google Maps. So number one, log into your Google Maps account with your Gmail account that manages your business profile. And that's how you can do all this from your mobile device. So why Google business profile? Again, Mike, it is the largest business data set on planet Earth. It is Google, right? So, they give us this tool to manage and promote our business for free on the world's biggest platform. It has basically gone from a place over the last 10-15 years to collect reviews to house a business's phone number, website, reviews, a couple of photos, an address. That's really what it was made for over the last 10, 15 years.

What's happening today is the business profile most of the time, to be perfectly honest, is the consumer's first step in the journey. Okay? So, they're going to go search something on Google or they're going to search something on ChatGPT or Gemini. A lot of times, all of those search engines, those tools are going to give the business profile or links to the reviews before they give links to the websites. And so, for businesses that focus on, and I know you mentioned that you're just building this website, you know, we do websites, too, but honestly, the roles have reversed in the last several years. The website comes second or third, and the Google business profile is the first step in the consumer's journey.

So, right away for everyone listening, if you're a business owner, if you do not have an extremely strong foundation with Google Business Profile as an organic listing, we're not talking about ads. We're not talking about Adwords, PPC, LSA, local service ads. We're talking organic, foundationally Google business profile. If you're not strong there, you're going to be a ghost everywhere else. Like, number one, you're going to be a ghost on traditional Google search because Google doesn't trust you right away. You're never going to be mentioned in AI overviews, which is now overtaking traditional search, right? What Google is promoting in the search results up on top is those AI overviews where they recommend one, two or three businesses, right? They try to get in and basically hijack the search and then LLMs, as you're mentioning, those large language models and these AI search tools, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, etc., they don't trust you unless you've got a strong foundation on Google. So, right away, I cannot stress this enough. If you do not have a strong organic presence on Google business profiles specifically, and we'll talk about the components of it that make it strong, then you're going to be a ghost over the next 6 months, two years, 5 years, 10 years.

[8:05] Mike: So, that was actually my next question is, okay, well, what makes a good strong Google business profile? And this is not just local business, this is all businesses. Like, I don't... So, I don't, as your marketing dude, I don't think I even have a Google business profile. Yeah, you should, right? I mean, you probably should. I'll probably create one right after this podcast. We'll have a conversation.

[8:21] Bobby: Right. So, everyone should have a Google business profile, whether you're, you know, an individual real estate agent, a law firm, and I know there's certain, you know, marketing laws with when it comes to legal that you've got to be aware of. You're you're the expert in that field. But no matter the business, no matter the industry, you should be having a strong leverage Google business profile. So, what makes a Google business profile strong? And for now on if I just say GBP, we can abbreviate it so that one everyone knows it's Google business profile because that's a mouthful to say a thousand times on a podcast.

So you mentioned reviews at the very start. Let's just talk about reviews. And this is the biggest misconception for all business owners that they think all five-star reviews are created equal. And a lot of this is an ego play, right? As a business owner, you see a five-star review come through and automatically you get that that hit of dopamine and you think, man, I am badass. I got a new five-star review. Right. And let's just let's take it let's go a little bit further. Especially in legal. Yeah. No doubt. Right. Yeah. Like lawyers obviously get a bad name. So if you get a good review, that's a great thing. But let's take a step further.

Okay. If you have a hundred reviews on your Google profile and they're all from the past several years, okay, you think on an ego trip that your business is kicking ass, that you've got a 100 past clients telling the rest of the world publicly that your business is awesome. Okay, I don't care the content that's inside the reviews or anything. Let's just say you've got a 100 five-star reviews, but they all came in 2025 and before, and you took your foot off the gas in 2026 because you think you're good because you got more reviews total on your business profile than all of your competitors in your local service area. Okay, this is what happens a lot in real estate, and I'm assuming it happens a lot in the legal space as well. People take their foot off the gas because they think they reached a milestone. I got 100 reviews. I got 200 reviews, a thousand reviews, whatever it is. Here's the thing. Google and now the LLMs, they have a massive recency bias. What have you done for me lately?

So if Google is giving us access on the world's largest platform to promote our business for free with lots of different tools within the business profile — posts, offers, events, products, reviews, services, photos and videos — they give us these tools to promote our business for free every single day on the world's biggest platform. But what have you done for me lately? That's the way they look at our businesses. So, they basically have everyone on a 30 or 45-day rolling clock. If you have not had key trust factors and signals updating on your business profile every 30 days, they basically look at you and they reset the clock and they say, "Yeah, this business, to be honest, Mike, your business hasn't got any new reviews in the last 30 days. You haven't added any new photos, no new videos, no custom services, no posts. We think your business is dying or dead. We don't give a rip about your 100 reviews that you got in years past. What has happened in the last 30 days?"

So, that recency bias is extremely real. And I cannot stress it enough. The magic number, just for everyone listening, the magic number is three to five reviews minimum per month. If you are not getting three to five keyword-rich reviews on your Google profile, they think your business is dying. Now, the cool part is, right, let's just say you're a real estate agent and you've got a database deep of, you know, a thousand people that you've worked with over the last 20 years and you haven't focused much on reviews publicly in the last several years and maybe you've had them all housed on Zillow or Realtor.com or Trustpilot or whatever it is, but you're now focusing on Google Business Profile because it's the most important. You can go back to that past database, no matter your industry, no matter your field, and if you go back to that past database and they start leaving reviews for you today, in Google's eyes, that's a brand new customer. They don't care if you worked with them 20 years ago. They don't care if you worked with him five years ago. If they leave a review for you today, that's a brand new customer in Google's eyes and they say, "Hey, wake up the machine. Look at Mike's business over here. Look at the Your Marketing Dude podcast. Okay, they've got a bunch of reviews. Something's going on with this guy. We like it. What have you done for me lately?"

(Mike talks about how the small guy has a fair shot against big corporations who slack off — similar to Instagram's algorithm giving one person the chance to share content with the world.)

[13:20] Bobby: And the theme that I definitely want to cover — there's a lot we want to cover today, but specifically we'll stick with reviews, but in general, what wins, especially with those LLMs and Agentic Search, is they want to see what makes you a local community expert. Okay? And specifically for Google, I'll talk about that. All right? Your Google business profile. What did I say powers GBP is Google Maps. So, this is a hyper local geography game.

And so, for most of the clients that you have within real estate or the legal field, okay, or if you're a local bar or restaurant or shoe store, it doesn't matter unless you're like a national brand like you or like LOC8. You're focusing on hyper local activity. So with all of the things that you're posting on Google business profile with every single post, every single video, every review, they've got to have hyper local geographic anchors. Okay? So specifically speaking about reviews, I'm going to read you like just a sample review. Like so most real estate agents, they get a five-star review. Again, it's a dopamine rush. They think they're great because somebody said, um, "highly recommend Mike Cuevas as my real estate agent. Five stars." Okay. You think that's a great review.

Google sees that review and they say that's pretty generic. Maybe that was spam. Maybe Mike purchased that review illegally, unethically. Um there's really nothing about this review that tells us why Mike is a community expert and why we should continue promoting his business in search results. Now, take on top of that, if you're not getting three to five of those, you're definitely screwed. So, that's kind of a sample review of what most agents do when they don't have their systems dialed in when it comes time to closing, right? They just say, "Hey, can you," they shoot a text off a week later or a month later, "Hey, can you review our transaction?" And then, first of all, it's way too late. Like, you got to get them when they're the happiest at the closing table or clear to close, right?

So, what makes a review great? Because not all five-star reviews... I basically have what we call the holy grail of a Google five-star review. Okay? There's five things that got to go into every review. And everyone needs to write these down and we can share these too and we help write templates for anybody that we work with. But the holy grail five elements of a powerful review. Number one, they've got to mention you by name. And what makes it even better is it if they mention the name in the review that matches the Google business profile listing. Okay. So for me, LOC8 My Business Real Estate Marketing Agency or at a minimum LOC8 My Business. If people leave a review and they just say, "I worked with Bobby and he was awesome." Google sees that as a disconnect, right? So, we want it to match us closely to the business name that's on the GBP.

Number two, they've got to leave five stars, right? You get three or four stars, you're already toast. You're behind the eight-ball. Number three, they've got — this is the most important thing that's going on these days — they've got to mention geographical anchors inside of the review. And they've got to say the city, the state, and what makes it even more powerful, and I know this is going to sound crazy to a lot of people, but what makes it even more powerful is that they mention the city, the state, and the neighborhood or street name. So, specifically for real estate folks, that's a big deal because that's easy. You're doing a specific transaction at a location, at a house, in a subdivision.

All right? So, five star reviews, mention you by name, geographical anchor — city, state, neighborhood, or street name. Number four, no matter the industry, the reviewer needs to leave some hot keywords that talk about the problems that you helped them solve. Okay? So, for legal team right away, you can just mention the specific parts of whatever was happening. And I'm sure there's laws of what they can say or what not say, but in real estate, it's pretty simple. Like you could say something like, "Mike, my agent, sold my house in Kansas City, Missouri, and he sold it in only five days and over asking price. We closed in less than 30 days and he made the... he was so communicative. The process was simple. He handled the negotiations like a champ." Okay, that's mentioning the problems that you helped solve, right? So no matter the industry, that's what you want people to say.

And lastly, number five on Google in particular, you can add a photograph to reviews. That's like the last trust signal that Google says, "Yep, that's a real life human leaving a real review of this real business, where they say they do business, who it is, and why they're a local community expert." So, that's the holy grail, and that is so important that a lot of people miss, whether it's they're lazy or they just don't dial in their systems with their review campaigns or they feel like they're being pushy. But, this isn't really telling people what to say. This is putting up guard rails to say, you know what? Hey, can you help me out? Can you take two minutes and leave a five-star review? Here's the five components that make a review great. Can you do it for us, please?

(Mike discusses Sweet Assist, a transaction management platform with done-for-you TC services that includes review request templates. The challenge is coaching people to leave optimized reviews.)

[19:08] Bobby: Yeah, I mean, it's pretty simple. You have to literally state it. So, like what we do in our templates that we provide to agents is here's what a review request should sound like. "Hey Mike, it's Bobby. I loved partnering with you at 123 Main Street. We had a great time serving you. Whatever. Um if you could... can you help me?" — that marketing psychology of you saying that's actually the subject line too if you're doing an email. Absolutely. "Can you help me" in all caps? That's what we found as a marketing guru like you, right? Like that's the psychology of all of this because you've done nothing but answer midnight text messages for 30, 40, 60 days helping people during this transaction, whether it's an attorney or a real estate agent, right? You are doing nothing but bending over backwards to help these people for weeks or months on end. So when you in turn for the very first time say, "Can you help us or can you help me?" Right away it triggers in that person, "Yep, whatever it is they're asking for, I'm going to try to help."

(Mike discusses the three goals of a transaction: 1) customer service, 2) spin-off business & referrals, 3) selling the house. With the right process, clients are more likely to leave reviews.)

[20:56] Bobby: And to even take it a step back further, Mike — I have always found the real estate teams that I helped run over the years... because before I'm a marketing guy and an owner of a marketing agency, I'm a real estate operator. Started and founded and scaled and sold large home inspection company, mortgage brokerage, property and casualty insurance brokerage, large REMAX team, now large eXp team. So like I'm an operator before I'm a marketer. So that's really important I think for people to understand is what we're talking about here are not theories of what we think as a marketing team works like this is the stuff that moves the needle.

So to take what you said and piggyback off of it, what we always taught our agents and what always worked is when you start the transaction, you set the tone by saying, "I want this to be a five-star experience for you." Not transaction, right? We want to avoid the words that feel transactional, but I want this to be such a five-star experience for you that at the end you want to bend over backwards to sing our praises across Google, Zillow, Yelp, whatever it is, right? So then at the very end when you do make the request it's oh yeah man Mike created such an experience and he told me how it was going to go and it was going to be strong now I'm willing to do it.

So whenever you do this request template it's basically: "Hey Mike, you know it's Bobby. I loved working with you at 123 Main Street. Um you were one of the best clients we ever had. Can you help us? We're on a mission to get to X number of reviews. Right? If you're at 250 reviews, say, 'We're on a mission to get to 300.' If you're at five, 'I'm on a mission to get to 10.' Whatever it is, you want to kind of give a little bit of a lofty goal. Can you help us? We're on a mission to get to X number of reviews. It takes two minutes to do it. Here's what's helpful for other people finding our services so that we can serve them."

"Please mention us by name and type it in like please mention, you know, LOC8 My Business, right? Don't just say mention me because if you've got a team name and they mention an agent on your team, there's a disconnect. So, you need to spell out, please mention the name of the business, type it out. Please mention the city, the state, and the neighborhood or street name that you bought or sold in. Please mention some hot keywords that talked about the problems that we helped solve in the transaction. Please mention hot keywords that signify our excellence, right? Local pro, top rated, some type of keywords where it's going to get the point across... And then if you could please add a photo to your review. It can be of your house, it can be of your dog, it can be of us at the closing table. It really helps our online visibility when you leave a review with these components."

(Bobby explains that this must be a 6-banger — email + text, then 2-3 days later another email + text, then 3-4 days later another outreach. Five to six requests is what moves the needle. People are quick to leave negative reviews, slow to leave positive ones.)

[26:16] Bobby: So, specifically since we're talking so much about LLMs, I think it's important to understand that yes, Google Business Profile is king, okay? But there obviously are other platforms that are important and this is one of those big misconceptions. As important as Google Business Profile is, you've got to be other places because what Google calls like those reviews that we just mentioned, those are literally what Google calls trust signals. So, every review you get is a trust signal sending to Google that you're a trustworthy business — E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. That's the playbook. So every review you get that has all this stuff, you're showing them that you've got experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness. Okay? All these other LLMs, they're scouring the internet to try to decide who is worthy and trustworthy enough to recommend in these first one or two recommendations, right?

So how do we get found on these other search platforms, not just traditional Google search? I will say traditional Google search or Google business profile feeds all of these LLMs to a certain degree. Okay, so I'll just cat out of the bag right away. ChatGPT does not pull directly from Google Business Profile. However, for those of us that are the old heads in the room and remember the search engine Bing, okay, like we've known Bing for years, right? It's been around now for 10, 15 years. I can honestly say I don't think I've ever used it as a search engine. And I think most people haven't, especially if you adopted Google or DuckDuckGo or anything like that, Firefox over 20 years ago.

However, Microsoft's partnership — their $13 billion partnership with OpenAI — has created a direct access avenue for ChatGPT visibility. So when I say Bing, I mean specifically Microsoft's version of Google business profile, which is Bing Places. So most people don't understand that Microsoft has its own Google business profile version called Bing Places. Now here's the cool part when I say that in a roundabout way your Google business profile feeds ChatGPT even though it's not directly. Here's the cool part. Microsoft knows it's never going to compete with Google for business listings. So, what's the first thing you do once you've got your Google business profile kicking ass and it's highly optimized? You've got killer reviews, you've got a built-out post section, you've got a ton of photos and videos, you've got services, you've got all this built out — you go to bingplaces.com and you click "sync with my Google business profile" and it will create a Bing Places profile for you that pulls directly from your Google business profile and mirrors it.

And so now you've got a killer profile on Bing Places and you didn't have to do a thing. Now it's a little bit different. You don't get reviews on Bing. You don't add new posts like you do on Google business profile. But all of the other trust signals that you have on your profile showing reviews, showing activity, showing photos and videos, it syncs right over. So for those in the room, don't just go straight to bingplaces.com though. You can't do that until your Google profile is top-notch. So make sure it's optimized.

And here's the other thing Mike and I think you know this too. There's this massive important ranking factor when it comes to online visibility and when I say trustworthiness, right, trust signals. If your business name... they call it the NAP: Name, Address, Phone. I always say plus website. Now, name, address, phone, NAP, plus website. If your name or your address or your phone or your website on Google is this, but then on Zillow.com, you're like, as an example, right, let's just say Mike Cuevas Realtor is your Google business profile name. But on Zillow, it's Mike Cuevas REMAX. And on homes.com it's Mike C eXp because you changed brokerages. And on Redfin it's Mike Cuevas. Okay. Four different business names across four important citations or platforms. Google and the LLM will look at your business and say are those four different businesses? Are they the same person? You know what? We can't make up our mind. So therefore, we're not going to promote any of them.

So the NAP consistency is so very important. It's like the very first thing. So it all starts with the Google business profile. It's the most authoritative citation out there. So that's why I always stress building it first, optimizing it first, and then making sure your name, your address, your phone, your website, your business description carries in tow across all these other platforms.

[31:18] Bobby: Is Zillow reviews important? Do we need reviews on those other platforms? Are they as important as on Google? Yes, those platforms are also important for reviews. Nothing's ever going to top Google, but when you have reviews across Zillow and Realtor.com and Homes.com and Yelp and Bing Places and your Google profile and your Facebook business page, all of a sudden to all those LLMs, they're looking at the consistency piece, right? They know who you are. They know where you do business. They know why you're a community expert. And then they also see reviews across these other platforms. Now they've got something to go off of to say, "Yep, we're starting to trust this business more. Therefore, we're more likely to recommend them in search results."

(Mike asks how to get people to review on multiple platforms. Bobby explains: send review links to 4-5 platforms. Using GoHighLevel CRM, you can shuffle which review platform is listed first. Better Business Bureau is also critical — even the free listing is a massive citation. Yelp directly feeds ChatGPT.)

[34:17] Bobby: ChatGPT is Yelp, it's Bing Places, it's Reddit, it's LinkedIn if you're not there. And then of course they go back and they verify with Google business profile. So they're not pulling directly from GBP, but they're verifying that you're on the world's most trusted, largest platform, which is Google. So you can kind of see the full suite of how everything works here. You've got local authority with GBP, with Bing Places, with Apple Maps, with Yelp. There's your local authority. You've got social and content authority, which is your space, right? Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. You have to be on YouTube, of course. You've got real estate authority. For those that are listening in real estate, you have to have Zillow, Realtor.com, Homes.com, Redfin. Here's two right here that we teach explicitly because we started seeing them pop up in every citation resource on ChatGPT searches — HomeLight and FastExpert. Really, if you don't have free profiles on those platforms, you're automatically missing out on a lot of ChatGPT references.

(Mike asks about posts and content on the GBP — most people don't realize it functions like a social media platform on the world's largest platform.)

[36:13] Bobby: Danny Sullivan, he's the director of Google search, back in April or May, he did like a TED talk essentially, an internal TED talk for Google employees and he put a slide up. This is real. And he even gave real estate agent as an example, which is really cool for people like us. So, what Google wants to see and what they're suppressing. Two different things. Commoditized content versus non-commoditized content. What I mean by that is, can I find this content on every other realtor's Google profile or something similar or is this original?

If you're posting a video template that was provided to you by a third party connector service and they're just posting for you and you think your profile is doing well because it has a new post, but it's just slop. Google, all the socials, they're going to suppress your content because it's commoditized. So, what's winning is local, hyper local, custom to you that can't be found anywhere else content. So, on the posts, for instance, we've seen thousands of realtors do this. Not to throw any other company under the bus, but I'm going to mention a few. Like when you have companies like Keeping Current Matters or RealGator or places like that that charge you 99 bucks a month and they connect to your Google profile or your Facebook or your LinkedIn or your Instagram and they post for you — when they post that graphic that says "Seven spring cleaning tips for keeping your home maintenance up to tabs" and then it lists clean your gutters, make sure the foundation's sloping away from the property... When you post that it's commoditized and they recognize that your profile is a mirror of 10,000 other profiles.

So, by real estate agents in particular thinking that you're doing an easy button, by having someone post for you that's nothing hyper local and there's nothing custom to you, your market, your niche audiences, then Google right away says, "Nope, not worthy. Not going to show this profile in search results." And then when they stop showing you, then the other LLMs don't trust you either.

(Bobby shares a real example: an agent connected to a third party posting "Real Estate Word of the Day: Listing Agent" with a definition. Nobody cares about that. The non-commoditized version is Q&A format.)

[39:08] Bobby: How do we hijack the LLMs to try to answer proactively what people are really searching for? It's doing question and answer format. So literally typing in your post the word "Question:" and as example, "How much should I budget for closing costs when buying a home in Naples, Florida?" Double space, type in the word "Answer:" and then answer the question with something hyper local and customized to you in your market. So that particular question would be: "Southwest Florida lifestyle living and Brenton Maybach, a real estate agent, right? um advises Naples home buyers to budget 3 to 5% of the purchase price for total closing costs. Brenton breaks this down. Loan origination fees, title insurance, home inspection, appraisal and attorney fees or title fees. Naples properties over $1 million may have higher title insurance costs than other markets." Right away, Google sees that and knows that it's hyper local. It's custom to that realtor. They're talking about specific audiences. So that's the type of stuff that's moving the needle in 2026. If you are posting generic slop, you're just screwing yourself.

(Mike asks about blog content and YouTube — how do they connect into GBP? Bobby explains: 1) Connect social profiles in your GBP dashboard, 2) Google Analytics now lets you add social profiles to monitor views/impressions. For LLMs, they read the first three sentences of long-form content — so hooks and hyperlocal content are everything.)

[43:56] Bobby: But in the age of the agentic search and LLM recommending our business, they're all connected because those are all trust signals showing the rest of the world, you know, not only human beings, but man, our target audience is no longer humans. Our target audience is AI's eyeballs because those are the ones making the recommendation whether it's in traditional search or whether it's an LLM search that's going like here's your two recommendations.

There's an actual stat on this — when people get an LLM search result like "who's the best real estate agent in Cape Coral, Florida or San Diego, California," what's happening is 53% of those people when they get that recommendation on ChatGPT or Gemini, they go straight to Google search and they type it in just to verify. Yeah. So, if you're getting found on AI search, congratulations. It's only half the battle. You've then got to be found on Google because people are verifying those search results on the world's most trusted platform, which is Google.

(Mike relates: he sees this with video content — people find attorneys/realtors on social, then go to Google to verify them. Attribution gets lost, but the brand-building works.)

[46:30] Bobby: What's important for people to take home is: in January 2024, two and a half years ago, AI search was less than 1% of all internet search traffic. By the summer of 2024, two years ago today, it had risen to 2.5%. So 1.5% jump in 6 months. As of June 2026, we're almost at 20% of all internet search traffic is driving through LLMs — ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity. That's a 154% increase in two years. So, for people to hear this and to say, you know, "I'm referral-based. I don't need to be found online." Here's the thing. If Mike recommends Bobby to Steve, Steve doesn't know Bobby. So, the first thing that Steve's going to do is just verify that Mike's recommendation is cool and he's going to Google Bobby. Always.

So if you don't do this stuff, okay, number one, you're going to be invisible to future people who are using LLMs. We thought we'd reach 15-20% 24 months from now in 2028 and we're there now. So this is rapid — the projections are hyper-scaling. This is a tsunami wave. So, if you are not getting found on Google or AI search tools, it's not too late, but you've got to do the foundational stuff. You've got to get reviews. You've got to get reviews across multiple platforms. Focus on Google first. Build up your organic Google presence.

PPC, LSA, all the AdWords stuff, meta ads, those are great for short-term wins. But the second you turn that faucet off and you stop paying that bill for those ads, if you have not optimized your organic presence, you're then a ghost. So, it's really important that if you are running ads to do both — because people think, "Oh, I run local service ads with Google or I do PPC" and then they don't even touch their organic listing. They are not one and the same.

(Mike shares about a criminal defense attorney client in Nashville whose organic search dropped off a cliff 6-8 months ago — possibly because more people are going to ChatGPT instead.)

[50:11] Bobby: The big thing obviously: build your organic presence. You know, the business profile and we can do another show sometime, right? Talk about the actual other components of the profile. There's a services section, there's a product section, an offer section, obviously reviews. Adding photos and video is so important. You know, remember geo tagging? It's pretty much been debunked. Like adding latitudinal, longitudinal coordinates to the back end of photos and scrubbing the EXIF data — it doesn't really move the needle much anymore.

But back to the very beginning, what powers Google business profile? Google Maps. What have they spent the last 10 years doing? Taking video and photo of every square inch of planet Earth. So when Mike and his team go out around town where they're a hyper local community expert on their business profile and they take photos of themselves in their branded gear in front of intersecting street signs or in front of the local landmarks in their town, the sports stadium, the park signs, the local business signs, the school signs — when you do that, that's the modern-day geo tag. Google knows where you are. And then they reference that with your address and your name on your business profile and they see that hey this person is actually doing business in the community where they say they do business on their business profile — there's another massive trust signal. So photos and videos I don't want people to ignore. When you add them consistently at least one or two photos and videos a week to your business profile, that is a massive ranking factor with Google.

[51:52] Mike: Bobby, tell me if I'm reading this wrong, but I see this like another gold rush type opportunity just to get in there because do you think like the people who come in early will be locking their spots? I know you got to keep feeding the beast, keep feeding the reviews, but like is that the advantage that we're talking about here? Because like, let's be honest, like in 12 to 18 months, if you guys are serious about your business, you're going to probably do something like this. You just don't really have an option unless you don't like being found or you're allergic to money. So like is that what we're talking about here is like the opportunity to get in first because it's going to be that much easier?

[53:17] Bobby: I mean the cool thing is, you know, Google Business Profile has been around for 15 years, right? But it's still like we're in a rush now. I like how you said it. We're in a gold rush with the agentic search, right? We're in the fourth industrial revolution. And it's changing the game, especially for local search because I can promise you — all that you and I do every single day is talk to very niche specific operators of their business. I can assuredly tell you that unless you and I are doing our podcasts and doing our webinars, people don't know this stuff.

And the actual stat is for real estate specific: 93% of all real estate professionals don't have an optimized online presence. Not just Google, but they don't do anything with Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Google, LinkedIn. 93%. So, to answer your question, is there an opportunity? Is this a gold rush? Hell yeah. Like, pay attention to this stuff. And I don't care if you're referral-based or not, okay? Anything can go away quickly. So, you've got to make sure that you can at least be found and/or verified when that referral does find you. So, is it too late? Nope. Absolutely not.

This is the way, Mike, I look at it really, honestly, is like 2005 — when Google blew up and people like you were focusing on early SEO practices. That is what's happening now with the agentic search. So, if you are not doing the things that we just talked about today so that you can be found, you're basically going to be competing with all these people that are specializing in it now and focusing on it so that in two, three, four years or hell, six months maybe you you're going to be invisible. So, you've got to be focusing on this stuff now.

When it comes to hyper local real estate agents, attorneys offices, you have such an advantage that if you pay attention to this now and make everything you do about hyper local content and all of your reviews and all of your posts and all of your videos, you cannot help but win. And someday we could all also talk about websites, too, because it's still important.

[55:46] Mike: I like it, man. Appreciate all your insight, folks. We appreciate you listening to another episode of Your Marketing Dude. Folks, if you're not sure what we do here, we create content. We put you in front of the people, mainly your database, and we keep you top of mind so they stop forgetting you exist. Because like Bobby just said, there's two ways that you're going to generate business. One off the people you already know — referrals, repeat business. That's always going to be true, I believe, in real estate. But two is going to be, well, how do you attract outside business? This is just another way if you don't like door knocking, cold calling, or doing all the sleazy stuff that we all hate doing so much, which is why you're listening to this podcast.

[56:21] Bobby: Yeah, the best place is to go to our website, loc8mybusiness.com. For the people that are listening, it's loc8mybusiness.com. You can schedule time with me on my calendar there. You can watch a ton of videos, kind of how-tos, basically if you're a DIYer. There's a lot of opportunities there. Download a ton of free resources. We're everywhere — Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, all the places you can find. And you can personally find my personal content as well across all the same platforms. You can usually find me at the handle Bobby Kerr.

[57:11] Mike: Love it, dude. Really good stuff. And thank you guys for listening to the episode. But if you have any questions, visit Bobby. If you want to come visit us, check out the content on our site, yourmarketingdude.com. We'll see you guys next week. Peace.